A plodding look at the many views of this enduring moralist.
A determined yet not exactly fresh look at this “hopelessly authoritarian, misogynistic, and conservative” sage, whose ideas have nonetheless endured and thrived in East Asia.
Time journalist Schuman (The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia’s Quest for Wealth, 2009) finds plenty of intriguing contradictions in the ideas of Confucius (551-479 B.C.), which were largely spread by his ardent followers in the fragmented Analects and other works. The primacy of education, the uses of meritocracy, the sanctity of the filial bond, the subservience of women, the harmonizing sense of knowing one’s place in society—these are some of the salient Confucian tenets. Schuman is not a scholar, and while he infuses his work with historical research, he remains rooted in the present day, seeking clues as to why Confucian ideas were both excoriated by the Chinese (during Mao Zedong’s era) and rehabilitated as a useful ploy for increasing productivity and prosperity in the workforce (since Deng Xiaoping’s era). To reflect the diversity of reception to Confucius’ ideas over the ages, the author divides his chapters by facets through which to view the enigmatic moralist: Confucius the Man, Confucius the Oppressor, Confucius the Businessman and so on. In his own time of squabbling kingdoms, Confucius proposed a revolutionary way of nation-building—not by armies but by benevolence. In language that is often dull and consistently injected with business terminology, Schuman looks at the spread of the sage’s ideas through East Asia, especially the adoption of his teachings by the Han political leadership. Yet by the 19th century, a once-great China had fallen well behind the West. Moreover, while the Communists executed a thorough rejection of Confucian ideas, the modern regimes of China, Singapore and others are keen to resurrect Confucian ideas for economic management.
A plodding look at the many views of this enduring moralist.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-465-02551-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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